210 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



lions of Lyndhurst), and as— though 1 have patiently waited 

 for its advent — no description has emanated from the pen of 

 those entomologists who usually describe larvae, although 

 the larva does not resemble the description given of it in 

 Newman's ' British Moths,' I cannot but suppose that they 

 have failed to obtain it, or that they have confounded it with 

 that of Noctua baja, which it closely resembles. I therefore 

 venture to offer to the readers of the ' Entomologist' the 

 following notes. lu the middle of August, 1874, having 

 captured at sugar some worn females of this species, in Hurst 

 Hill Enclosure, New Forest, 1 confined them, along with 

 some twigs of bramble, in a bandbox covered with leno- 

 muslin, and they deposited eggs pretty freely, not on the 

 plant, but in clusters on some projecting splinters of wood, 

 and on the leno. The eggs were of the usual Noclua form, 

 and pale lemon-yellow in colour, and hatched at the end of 

 the month. The young larvae at first resembled those of 

 N. /estiva, hut after a moult they assumed a dull opaque tint, 

 somewhat between olive and Prussian green, with the five 

 lines tolerably well defined, paler than the ground colour, 

 the spiracular especially conspicuous and whiter than the 

 rest, its upper boundary defined by a thin dark line ; their 

 heads ochreous-brown. They fed at first on mint, but during 

 the winter 1 supplied them with carrots; and the only three 

 which I retained through hybernation attained a very large 

 size, and buried by the end of the first week in February, 

 1875. The full-fed larva is one inch and four lines in length, 

 at rest; one inch and nine lines when fully extended, when 

 it appears rather more elongate and less dumpy than that of 

 N. baja. It is plump, attenuated in front; the 12th segment 

 tumid dorsally, and the segmental divisions tolerably deeply 

 incised ; the head and the usual trapezoidal and other dots 

 each bearing slender whitish hairs. The head is sienna- 

 brown reticulated with black, with two crescentic black 

 marks (one on each side of the median suture) placed back 

 to back, and having between them a pale line forked at its 

 lower extremity. The plate on the 2nd segment is raw- 

 sieuna-brown, with the commencement of the dorsal line 

 whitish, broad, and well marked ; the subdorsal indistinct, or 

 sometimes absent. The body is smooth and soft, and its 

 colour is a mixture of different tints of brown and dirty 

 ochreous, sometimes even (as in A^. baja) approaching to a 

 pale rose-madder, at other times of a more uniform dingy 

 sepia or umber-brown, irrorated and reticulated with smoke- 



